Amanda B. Thomas faces her accuser: Her mother

Tuesday

May 13, 2014 at 12:01 AMMay 13, 2014 at 11:13 PM

Mary LouMontgomerymarylou.montgomery@courierpost.com

Amanda B. Thomas has been incarcerated in the Marion County Jail at Palmyra since mid March, when she was arrested and charged with Theft/stealing of a credit card or a letter of credit, a Class C felony.On Monday, May 12, during her preliminary hearing in Marion County Circuit Court, she faced her accuser: her mother, Waunetta Webb.“My daughter and granddaughter were at my house and took my credit card,” Webb testified. “I was out of town. They used it and I know it was them that used it.“She had used it in the past and did not have my permission. I was lied to big time.”Webb testified that she discovered the credit card use when she received the bill. She said they used the card for “a motel room, an escort service, tattoos, Bonkers … things I never go to. When I got the bill, I was appalled and shocked.“I called the card company and canceled the card and they gave me a new one. I made a police report.”Marion County prosecuting attorney, David N. Clayton, asked Webb if she gave her daughter permission to buy a computer with the card. “No way,” she answered.He asked if she gave her daughter permission to buy firearms. Again, she replied, “No way.”Webb testified that her daughter called her and said that she was cold and hungry, and that she didn’t have anywhere to go. “They were kicked out of their house. Her and her boyfriend and a little boy.” Webb then said that she gave her daughter her credit card information to pay for a motel room. “Then she started using that card without my permission. I’m on a fixed income and I can’t afford that. It went on and on and on. She said she was on Pay Pal and was going to pay me back.”Clayton asked Webb if she in a sense gave her daughter a blank check. “Never,” she replied. Officer Mark McFarland of the Hannibal Police Department arrested Thomas on a previous charge, and in the process he learned that she was “under investigation for a case of fraud,” he said. “She told me she was staying in motels, and she initially got her mother’s credit card number, and later she had picked up the credit card from her mother’s house.”Thomas gave the credit card to the police. “She admitted spending $2,000,” McFarland said.On May 2, in explaining why he couldn’t recommend a bond reduction, Marion County Prosecutor David N. Clayton explained that in a previous case she used her parents’ credit without their permission, and purchased a semi automatic weapon.Following testimony, Judge John J. Jackson found probable cause and bound Thomas over to circuit court for arraignment at 9:30 a.m. May 19. He also set the next hearing for misdemeanor charges involving marijuana and drug paraphernalia for 8:30 a.m. May 23.